We were called to a customer’s home that had problems printing from her laptop to her Printer.
On closer inspection, I saw that the Wi-Fi network that the laptop was connected to, was set as Public even though she was on her home network.
I changed the network to Private and the printer started printing again.
However on restarting the laptop I saw that the network had been changed back to Public again.
I decided to uninstall the Avast anti-virus software on her computer as this can affect the settings in Windows.
After doing that I was able to set the network to Private and on subsequent restarts, the network setting stayed as Private.
I then reinstalled Avast anti-virus for her and made sure that the Private network setting remained which it did.
Being able to put your computer in a Private home network, is vital if you want to be able to share files, folders and printers between other computers on the same home network. The Public network setting is only if you’re connecting your computer to a Public network such as at an Airport or Coffee shop or Library, where you don’t want your computer’s hard drive to be visible to the other computers that will be connected to the same Public network.
If you are using Avast-For-Business, then please contact the administrator of your Avast account to change the Firewall policy to allow your computer to decide the Network profiles used when you connect to a new network.
